Monkey Wrench

  His driver, Henry, gave him a smile when Silo walked out onto the front porch.

  “Good morning, Reverend. You’re looking chipper this morning.”

  Silo smiled. “I feel great. I had a wonderful night’s sleep last night.”

  He sure had, after putting Mary through her paces and leaving her with a gaping asshole.

  * * * *

  Mary Silo clutched the money in her left hand, keeping it tucked in her lap while she ate. Normally, she despised it when Hannibal gave her money. She didn’t want anything from him if she could avoid taking it. If she had to buy clothes or other items, she could console herself with the fact that they inherited her parents’ money when they’d died, and what she was buying came from that portion of it.

  Well, that was what she told herself.

  She hated it when Hannibal gave her cash. And she knew damn well why he did it, too. To reinforce his opinion of her.

  Today, however, she’d take the boon and run with it.

  She’d had a plan she’d mulled over for years, ever since that smarmy little weasel, Jerald, started working for Hannibal. She’d never had the balls to do anything about it before now. Her husband had the world convinced he was a great and kind man, and she was a fragile little shit who could barely wipe her own ass.

  She’d made a mistake a few weeks earlier, forgetting to slow her step, slur her speech, and Hannibal had Dr. Isley out to adjust her meds.

  That had been a reminder to carefully watch how she acted around everyone. Especially when in her bedroom or bathroom.

  Hannibal was smart enough not to have cameras in other parts of the house, where they might accidentally be discovered. But in her bedroom and bathroom, she was guaranteed she’d never have a moment to herself, ever. She’d either have a nurse with her, or Hannibal watching over her.

  Bastard.

  Oh, how she wished she could go back in time and take back what happened, her caving to Hannibal’s blackmail. Back then, young and stupid, she hadn’t realized that what he’d done was pay to have her raped when his friend spiked her drink. She didn’t realize she could have pressed charges against him for what he’d done to her.

  All she’d been able to envision at the time was the potential shock and dismay on her parents’ faces if Hannibal showed them that video. How her reputation would be forever ruined. How people would have looked at her for the rest of her life when the sex tape got out.

  And she’d had no doubts that Hannibal would have shown it to everyone. He would have spread it all over the Internet. There wouldn’t have been a university she could have transferred to where eventually it wouldn’t have come back to haunt her.

  He would have made sure of it.

  But now…

  She didn’t know exactly what he and Jerald were up to. She hadn’t heard all the details. But she knew enough from their talks on Sundays, when Hannibal was cocky enough not to care she could hear them, that something horrible was in the works.

  This wasn’t about her any longer. Her life was over, wasted.

  She couldn’t allow Hannibal to kill or harm innocent people.

  She’d been pretending to take her meds. A few months ago she thought she could stop them at once and it nearly made her sick, so she’d been forced to take them. That had taught her. She slowly weaned herself off them, waiting longer and longer to take them, so that eventually she could stop some of them, and greatly reduce others.

  She palmed the pills, carefully putting them in her pocket and then removing them later and flushing them down one of the other toilets in the house, where Hannibal didn’t have a camera to watch.

  Today, after breakfast, she prepared for her hair appointment. Elise would take her.

  Elise always left her there and went to get them lunch and coffees from a cafe a few doors away. Mary had always told her to take her time, not to rush. The nurse was usually gone at least thirty minutes. About the same amount of time it took for her hair color to set. A color that Hannibal insisted they use on her.

  Next door to the hair salon was a store that, among other things, sold cell phones. She’d have to risk hiding it in her makeup bag in her purse. It was one of the few places in her life where Hannibal never went.

  She didn’t know what she’d do once she got it, but she had an idea.

  All she’d need was the courage and strength—and probably more than a little luck—to go through with whatever she decided to do.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning, Lima checked for messages from Bubba after eating breakfast. He had the room to himself because Quack had gone downstairs to the laundry room to take his turn washing clothes.

  “Huh.” He stared at the screen, still not sure what he was looking at.

  Finally, he picked up his laptop and walked down the hall, where he knocked on the chemistry lab door.

  Clara, dressed in a protective suit, walked over to the small window. “What?” she called through it.

  He held up the laptop so she could read the screen through the glass. He pointed at one line in particular. “What the hell does that mean?”

  She was a nurse practitioner who’d been working at a charity clinic in Mexico when she joined them a few weeks earlier. Because of her medical training, she’d been enlisted as a lab assistant for Q and Sin. Yankee and Oscar had fallen for her, hard, and she’d fallen for the twin brothers, too.

  A frown creased her face as she read the computer screen. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it before. Hey, Q, Sin, come here.”

  The two scientists, also wearing protective suits, joined her and read the laptop screen through the window.

  Both men shook their heads. “No idea, mate,” Sin said. “Sorry.”

  “If you find out what it is,” Q said, “please inform me of that.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Oh,” Clara said before he could leave. “Maybe Doc knows. Ask him. He was trained in military med school, wasn’t he? If not, I can send a message to Paul at the clinic and ask him.”

  “Sheesh, duh. You’re right. Thank you. Sorry I interrupted you guys.”

  “No worries,” Sin assured him.

  Lima went in search of Doc. He found him, Doc’s partner, Tango, and Pandora up on the roof tending to the garden.

  Lima showed him the laptop.

  Doc frowned, taking the laptop from him to read it. “Who has that?”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Yeah, I know what it is, but first you tell me who has it. I know for a fact it’s no one on this team, because it disqualifies you by default from service. They’ll kick a person out before basic’s over.”

  “That woman’s brother, the one who is apparently one of the church volunteers. It’s why the military gave him a medical discharge.”

  On his screen, the message Bubba had sent him.

  Classified DX cause on subject due to polymorphed adrenal genetic sensory disruption, AKA PAGSD. Can’t tell you what that means yet, because there is literally nothing I have found in standard medical databases talking about it. Now you have me curious.

  If Bubba couldn’t find something out, Lima knew it had to be a cause for concern.

  “So what the hell is it?” Lima asked.

  Doc returned the laptop to him. “The military has a top-secret lid on it. It’s a genetic condition they think is caused by a combo of experimental vaccines they were giving servicemen at one point. They used them for about four years before military doctors at bases who treated families and children started noticing some male babies fathered by men who’d received that exact combo of vaccines were having…issues.”

  “Issues how?”

  “Symptoms that were sort of a mix of ADHD and dyslexia and autism, problems with sensory recognition and processing, cognitive issues, things like that. They immediately discontinued using the vaccination regimen and started trying to track the children, but it was difficult once the men were discharged. But when the boys c
ame of age and started applying to join the military, they were able to pick them out via genetic sequencing tests and then boot them from service. They only teach military doctors about it. The government didn’t want a class-action lawsuit over it. The only reason military doctors were told about it was so they could look for the symptoms in children, and then later in adults.”

  “Why does it automatically disqualify someone from service?”

  “Because they are incapable of focusing or staying on task. Not exactly a quality you want in a person trained to operate high-powered weaponry. Most of them never successfully complete high school. It’s usually misdiagnosed and treated by civvie doctors as ADD, ADHD, or mild autism, and then sometimes those kids can do okay. But only if they’re caught very early and treated aggressively. Most aren’t, obviously, unless their parents have the money to afford private doctors and treatments. Anyone in the public system, if they get treatment, usually receive meds and a pat on the head and are sent on their way, but it doesn’t fix their problem.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone ever picked up on this?”

  “Because of the extremely limited number of men affected. And the genetic sequencing test to find it is one the military came up with. It’s not a test private labs ever do, because it looks for specific sets of markers in places and in ways that no other test looks for. It was easy for them to keep it classified. When I was in med school, there were currently less than five thousand known adult cases, several hundred more in people who were deceased, and numbers of new cases being identified every year were rapidly dropping as the far end of the original vaccine usage window was approaching.”

  Lima stared at him. “Say what?”

  “They stopped using the vaccines. Apparently the effect wore off after a while. Any kids the men fathered later when they weren’t getting those vaccine combos weren’t affected.”

  “So what about Stacia?”

  “It didn’t affect girls for some reason, and they haven’t passed it on to any of their children, as far as we can tell. And boys who have it, they don’t pass it along, either. Not exactly a line of research the military is eager to pursue, frankly.”

  “All that to avoid a lawsuit, huh?”

  “Well, a lawsuit, and to prevent another public backlash against vaccinations like they had way back in the early 2000s. There were already enough flu deaths without people refusing to get vaccinated for fear of government fuckery.”

  Lima closed the laptop. “Okay, thanks.”

  He returned to his room and then realized he might as well save Bubba the hassle of researching. He typed out a quick reply summarizing what he’d just learned from Doc and sent it.

  Obviously, if it was a military secret, Stacia didn’t know anything about it.

  And based on the history Bubba dug up on the siblings, they likely had never been able to afford quality medical care to get her brother treatment that would have allowed him to live a more higher-functioning life.

  Crap.

  Now he felt sorry for the woman, and he didn’t even know her.

  * * * *

  That afternoon, Lima heard back from Bubba.

  Still working on decrypting files. Still have internal access.

  That wasn’t much.

  In fact, it was nothing.

  Lima had a hunch he wanted to follow up on, so he gathered Quack and went in search of Papa.

  “I want to go do a little recon.”

  “Why, where, and how?”

  “I want to return to that neighborhood and scout around.”

  “You want to find that woman.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. I really think she might be a way for us to get some answers.”

  “We can wait until Bubba decrypts the data.”

  “Sure, we can do that. And then if he finds something that’s germane to our mission, it might mean we still have to go scout around. Look, just me and Quack. I promise we won’t go shoot up anything.”

  Papa looked at Alpha, who’d been listening in. “Your opinion?”

  He shrugged. “We’re all going stir crazy. I say let them take a burner cell and go. They might find out something we can use.”

  Papa scrubbed his face with his hands. Their commander hadn’t shaved yet and bore stubble on his cheeks and chin. “Why do I have a feeling I might regret this?”

  “Maybe we’ll pleasantly surprise you,” Lima said.

  Quack grinned. “Maybe we’ll find a girl of our own.”

  “Maybe you two better get out of here before I change my mind,” Papa told them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “So what do you want to do?” Quack asked Lima.

  Lima was driving. “I just want to check out the neighborhood right now.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He looked at Quack. “I do.”

  Quack shook his head. “I know you better than that, dude. Fess up.” Quack suspected Lima wanted another close-up look at that cutie.

  He hadn’t gotten a good look at her in the scuffle at the clinic because he’d been too busy trying not to shoot any innocent bystanders. But from the ID picture they had of her, he had to agree with his partner.

  She was a cutie.

  They had shared several women in their past. It was easier to share one woman, make her a promise to rock her world, and then be able to keep that promise, than it was to try to find a woman for each of them.

  Not like they could have a relationship anyway.

  Then again, he knew Doc and Tango, and Yankee and Oscar, had thought that, too.

  Before now, it was just one or two nights here and there, easy to slip into a woman’s bed and ruin her for future men. They took great pride in ruining a woman in the good kind of way. It was fun to blow a woman’s mind with the best sex of her life.

  And he’d seen that look before on Lima’s face.

  “Hey, her brother is in that group,” Lima said. “Maybe she can talk to him for us, get us information. Maybe she has information.”

  “Maybe she’s single and lonely?”

  Lima didn’t bother replying to that, meaning Quack knew he’d squarely hit the nail on the head.

  “She’s not married,” Lima noted.

  “Doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Would it be so bad if she’s single?” Lima asked him.

  “Didn’t say that. But if your plan involves getting her in bed as well as getting information, let’s get our stories straight from the start.”

  * * * *

  Lima and Quack cruised around the neighborhood first before parking on the street in front of the apartment building. Run-down and depressing, it wasn’t the worst neighborhood, but it spoke volumes regarding the woman’s financial situation.

  They both donned surgical masks. Lima led the way upstairs to the apartment listed in the information they had.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to go knock on her door,” Quack quietly griped as they walked down the hall. “What happened to just doing recon?”

  “This is recon.”

  “Bullshit. Some people would call this stalking.”

  “Everyone would call this stalking.”

  “Then why are we doing it?”

  Lima didn’t bother responding. He wouldn’t be deterred.

  The building was old, but clean. No graffiti on the walls, no broken lights in the hall, the paint a blah beige color, but relatively fresh.

  They’d seen far worse in their travels, but it definitely confirmed the residents did not occupy the upper echelons of society.

  They knocked on the door.

  Lima noticed a flash of movement through the viewfinder.

  “Stacia,” he called, raising his voice, “please. We want to talk to you about Marvin. We’d like to help you get him out of there.”

  * * * *

  Stacia froze on her way to the kitchen to grab a knife. She didn’t know how long it might take cops to get there if she called them, which was why s
he ran for a weapon first. But now through the sound of her pulse throbbing in her ears, her mind latched on to the mystery man’s offer.

  Turning, she walked back to the door. They were big guys. Cute guys, but definitely cops or military. They could probably kick the door in and kill her before she reached the phone.

  But if they were going to do that, they likely would have done so already instead of politely knocking and talking to her.

  The one looked familiar, with black hair, but she couldn’t place him. His handsome features, what she could see over the top of his surgical mask, looked like he belonged in a museum, like one of those old marble statues from ancient Rome. The blond guy she’d never seen before, but he was equally cute.

  “Who are you?” she called through the door.

  “Can we talk to you?” the dark-haired guy said. “Please? Just talk. If you want to come outside and talk in the park next door, we’ll meet you there.”

  And his voice sounded familiar but she still couldn’t place him.

  She watched them through the viewfinder as she tried to make up her mind. Their postures looked relaxed. They weren’t holding any weapons, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have any.

  In fact, they looked like men who were probably always armed.

  “What do you think you can do to help me?” she asked, stalling for time until she could make her instincts and brain come to an agreement. Instinctively, the men didn’t raise her hackles.

  Her brain was trying to logic her gut out of that conclusion.

  “We don’t know,” the guy said. “That’s the point. We have a mutual vested interest in finding out what’s going on in there, but we know it’s not anything good.”

  It looked like the black-haired guy was doing all the talking.

  “What if I say no?”

  The black-haired guy looked like he let out a frustrated sigh that wasn’t loud enough to make it through the door, but his body language bore no hint of anger. “Then I guess we’ll go away, and neither you nor we gain any information that might help any of us.”